Jermlaine
Template:Infobox Greyhawk creature
Jermlaines, also known as jinxkin, bane-midges, gremlins, atomites, and minimi (singlular: minimus), are evil underground dwellers who spend their days sneaking, hiding and plotting to humiliate larger races and create general badness. The word "jermlaine" is Old Oeridian for "troublemaker" - "gremlin" is a modern corruption of it.
Physical Description
Jermlaines resemble small (approximately fifteen inches in height), misshapen, grey-skinned humanoids covered with warts and pimples and random tufts of hair. Their faces are grumpy and big-nosed, their limbs scrawny and thin with swollen joints. Their skin is baggy and loose enough to resemble clothes, their foreheads wrinkly enough to make them look like they're wearing caps; some sages believe this is because they were created from gnomes whose bones were shrunk but not their skin. Some wear scraps of clothing, while others don't bother; it is difficult for others to tell the difference in any case. They have slightly rat-like traits. Their appearance could even be described as slightly cute, however ugly.
Jermlaine eyesight is weak, but they can see in pitch darkness up to 30 feet.
Language
The jermlaine language sounds like high-pitched, ratlike squeaking, and indeed rats and their kin seem to be able to understand it readily. This is perhaps related to the famed gnomish knack for communicating with burrowing creatures. They may understand other languages, but cannot clearly speak them. Jermalaines have no concept of reading and writing, and they detest music.
Society
Jermlaines dwell underground in large extended families ranging from about 12-50 individuals living only to plot and scheme. A clan consists of 4-16 such families, each led by a patriarch. The strongest and cleverest of the patriarchs becomes clan chief. With foul dispositions and evil designs, they are also extremely adept at hiding and sneaking. They also seem to have a kinship of sorts with rats; jermlaine groups are often accompanied by up to an entire plague of rats, including a few giant ones. A jermlaine lurking in the shadows can itself be mistaken for an oddly shaped, vaguely humanoid rat.
Male jermlaines are warriors; females are warriors before and after their childbearing years, but remove themselves from combat while rearing children. They teach their young how to ambush and humiliate larger species.
Jermlaines show one another they can be trusted by flopping the loose skin hanging from their protruding bellies to show they have no weapons concealed in there (as they often do).
"Rovers" are lone traveling jermlaines who make themselves useful delivering messages and transporting good between communities, using rats as mounts and beasts of burden. Occasionally a rover will take on an apprentice.
Environment
Jermlaines are particularly common in the caverns beneath the Hellfurnaces, where they were first created, but they may be found in virtually any underground area, even in the arctic and on other worlds. Normally their homes are networks of tunnels appropriate to their size, but they will inhabit buildings made by "giant" races (that is, any larger than themselves) provided their previous inhabitants are safely gone. Some have been known to lair in the sewers of major cities, even allying themselves with local thieves guilds.
Jermlaines are usually associated with rats, giant rats, camprats, osquips and the like, sharing their homes with them and pooling their resources. They treat these vermin as trusted equals, anad jermlaine clans name themselves after the type of rodent they share their lives with. Those fortunate enough to dwell with osquips shape osquip dung for a variety of useful forms, as when it dries it becomes nearly as hard as stone.
Jermlaine lairs and nearby environs are, naturally, festooned with traps, which help compensate for their lack of size.
Ecology
Jermlaines feed mainly on carrion, insects, fungi, and molds, but will devour larger prey if they can get it; usually this means lizards and the like. They have a real fondness for sweet foods like candy and fruit, and will accept these as bribes.
Jermlaines may be related to other creatures catagorized as "gremlins," including mites and snyads. Some sages have theorized that these other races are "stages of regression between jermlaine and gnome."
Religion
Jermlaines normally worship Pyremius.
History
The ancestors of the jermlaines were gnomish (probably svirfneblin, given the location and era) slaves of a Suloise wizardly cabal dwelling in caverns beneath the Hellfurnace Mountains (then known as the Southern Crystalmists). The cabal, known as the Inheritors of the Red Gloom, were a society of Pyremius worshipers, most of them were fire elementalist mages or mage-assassins, dwelling underground because of their opposition to the government of the Suloise Imperium.
Some of the gnomish slaves became priests of Pyremius themselves, escaping their masters and relocating to the mountains adjacent Jeklea Bay. Using the appearance of their patron god as a model, they used captured Suel humans (including some of the Inheritors) and their own flesh to create a minute race of spies and guards. The gnomes were destroyed by spellcasters of the Imperium circa -1,600 CY, but their servant race survived and flourished.
References
- Moore, Roger E. "Legacy of the Suel Imperium." Dragon #241. Renton, WA: TSR, 1997.